Month: August 2014

At the height of the financial crisis in 2008 the U.S. government forced some of the countries largest banks to take “bailout” funds amounting to billions of dollars in order to keep them from going bankrupt. It was a move designed to not only keep too-big-to-fail financial institutions afloat, but one that would inspire confidence and keep American consumers spending. As a result, the last several years have seen stock markets reach record highs with Americans continuing to rack up personal debt for real estate, vehicles, education, and consumer goods as if the financial crisis never happened.

But the purported recovery may not be everything that government officials and influential financial leaders have made it out to be.

Recent comments delivered by Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer suggest that not only are global and domestic economies still struggling, but the U.S. government itself is preparing financial contingency plans in anticipation of another widespread economic event.

However, this time around, according to Fischer, the government won’t be bailing out financial institutions in need of cash. Instead, failing banks will turn directly to their unsecured creditors when they need money. And within this context, that means you.

The recession that began in the United States in December 2007 ended in June 2009. But the Great Recession is a near-worldwide phenomenon, with the consequences of which many advanced economies continue to struggle. Its depth and breadth appear to have changed the economic environment in many ways and to have left the road ahead unclear.

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Work on the use of the resolution mechanisms set out in the Dodd-Frank Act, based on the principle of a single point of entry–though less advanced than the work on capital and liquidity ratios–holds the promise of making it possible to resolve banks in difficulty at no direct cost to the taxpayer.

As part of this approach, the United States is preparing a proposal to require systemically important banks to issue bail-inable long-term debt that will enable insolvent banks to recapitalize themselves in resolution without calling on government funding–this cushion is known as a “gone concern” buffer.

In the decades following World War II, Japan’s economy grew so quickly and for so long that experts came to describe it as nothing short of miraculous. During the country’s last big boom, between 1986 and 1991, its economy expanded by nearly $1 trillion. But then, in a story with clear parallels for today, Japan’s asset bubble burst, and its markets went into a deep dive. Government debt ballooned, and annual growth slowed to less than one percent. By 1998, the economy was shrinking.

That December, a Princeton economics professor named Ben Bernanke argued that central bankers could still turn the country around. Japan was essentially suffering from a deficiency of demand: interest rates were already low, but consumers were not buying, firms were not borrowing, and investors were not betting. It was a self-fulfilling prophesy: pessimism about the economy was preventing a recovery. Bernanke argued that the Bank of Japan needed to act more aggressively and suggested it consider an unconventional approach: give Japanese households cash directly. Consumers could use the new windfalls to spend their way out of the recession, driving up demand and raising prices.

As Bernanke made clear, the concept was not new: in the 1930s, the British economist John Maynard Keynes proposed burying bottles of bank notes in old coal mines; once unearthed (like gold), the cash would create new wealth and spur spending. The conservative economist Milton Friedman also saw the appeal of direct money transfers, which he likened to dropping cash out of a helicopter. Japan never tried using them, however, and the country’s economy has never fully recovered. Between 1993 and 2003, Japan’s annual growth rates averaged less than one percent.

Today, most economists agree that like Japan in the late 1990s, the global economy is suffering from insufficient spending, a problem that stems from a larger failure of governance. Central banks, including the U.S. Federal Reserve, have taken aggressive action, consistently lowering interest rates such that today they hover near zero. They have also pumped trillions of dollars’ worth of new money into the financial system. Yet such policies have only fed a damaging cycle of booms and busts, warping incentives and distorting asset prices, and now economic growth is stagnating while inequality gets worse. It’s well past time, then, for U.S. policymakers — as well as their counterparts in other developed countries — to consider a version of Friedman’s helicopter drops. In the short term, such cash transfers could jump-start the economy. Over the long term, they could reduce dependence on the banking system for growth and reverse the trend of rising inequality. The transfers wouldn’t cause damaging inflation, and few doubt that they would work. The only real question is why no government has tried them.

“If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks…will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered…. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.” – Thomas Jefferson

Does this chart portray an economic recovery in any way? Wages have been stagnant since the START of the supposed recovery in 2010. Real median household income, even using the highly understated CPI, is on a glide path to oblivion. You just need to observe with your own two eyes the number of Space Available signs in front of office buildings, strip centers and malls across America to realize we have further to fall. Low paying, part-time burger flipping jobs aren’t going to revive this debt saturated economic system. But at least the .1% are enjoying their Federal Reserve created high. Fiat is a powerful drug when administered in large doses to addicts on Wall Street.

The S&P 500 has risen from 666 in March of 2009 to 1,972 today. That is a 196% increase in a little over five years. During this same time, real household income has fallen by 7%. There have been a few million jobs added, while 11 million people have left the labor market. According to Robert Shiller’s CAPE ratio, the stock market valuation has only been higher, three times in history – 1929, 1999, and 2007. He seems flabbergasted by why valuations are so high. Sometimes really smart people can act really dumb.

The Federal Reserve balance sheet was $900 billion before the 2008 financial crisis. Today it stands at $4.4 trillion. The Fed has increased their balance sheet by 220% since the March 2009 market lows. Do you think there is any correlation between the Fed puppets printing $2.4 trillion and handing it to their Wall Street puppeteers, who used their high frequency trading supercomputers and ability to rig the markets so they never lose, and the third stock bubble in the last 13 years? It’s so self evident that only an Ivy League economist or CNBC anchor wouldn’t be able to see it.

Let’s look at the amazing stock market recovery without Federal Reserve heroine pumped into the veins of Wall Street banker addicts. If you divide the S&P 500 Index by the size of the Federal reserve balance sheet, you see the true purpose of QE1, QE2, and QE3. It wasn’t to save Main Street. It was to save Wall Street. Without the Federal Reserve funneling fiat to the .1% banking cabal and creating inflation in energy, food, and other basic necessities for the 99.9%, there is no stock market recovery. The recovery has occurred in Manhattan and the Hamptons. It’s been non-existent for the vast majority of people in this country. The wealth effect and trickle down theory have been disproved in spades. The only thing trickling down on the former middle class from the Fed is warm and yellow.

By any objective measure Reserve Currencies — particularly the US dollar — are dying. The question most analysts get when discussing the reality of the US and world economic/financial situations is, if things are so dire, why doesn’t it feel like it? (***see dire links below ) If all the facts stated about $6 trillion annual (GAAP basis) US budget deficits or US government total debt and obligations in excess of $90 trillion are true, why does the system still “function”??? Social Security recipients receive checks, the military is still paid, the garbage gets picked up, and stores still have stocked shelves. Life seems hectic but generally “normal”. So, is there a problem at all and if so, when and how will it go from theoretical to reality?

US is Bankrupt: $89.5 Trillion in US Liabilities vs. $82 Trillion in Household Net Worth & The Gap is Growing. We Now Await the Nature of the Cramdown. – See more at: http://charlesbiderman.com/2014/08/04/us-is-bankrupt-89-5-trillion-in-us-liabilities-vs-82-trillion-in-household-net-worth-the-gap-is-growing-we-now-await-the-nature-of-the-cramdown/#sthash.RkY8CKFZ.dpufUS is Bankrupt: $89.5 Trillion in US Liabilities vs. $82 Trillion in Household Net Worth & The Gap is Growing. We Now Await the Nature of the Cramdown. – See more at: http://charlesbiderman.com/2014/08/04/us-is-bankrupt-89-5-trillion-in-us-liabilities-vs-82-trillion-in-household-net-worth-the-gap-is-growing-we-now-await-the-nature-of-the-cramdown/#sthash.RkY8CKFZ.dpuf
***US is Bankrupt: $89.5 Trillion in US Liabilities vs. $82 Trillion in Household Net Worth & The Gap is Growing. We Now Await the Nature of the Cramdown

or
***America Has Adopted The Sclerotic European / Japanese Model
or
***The Story of America’s Economic Illiteracy – Truth hidden in Plain Sight…Yet We Choose to be Blind?

Commit to about 5 to 10 minutes of reading and maybe we can have a very plausible answer.

A LITTLE BACKGROUND

Following WWII, a new monetary system for international commerce and finance was implemented. This agreement known as Bretton Woods (the location in New Jersey where the conference was held) gave the expected Allied victors the spoils and represented the World as of 1945.

CHIEF FEATURES OF THE BRETTON WOODS SYSTEM:

• An obligation for each country to adopt a monetary policy that maintained the exchange rate by tying its currency to the U.S. dollar

• The ability of the IMF (created by the Bretton Woods agreement along with many other current day acronyms) to bridge temporary imbalances of payments (IMF would loan money to nations in trouble with strings attached to ideally resolve these imbalances and keep the system functioning).

• Address the lack of cooperation among other countries and to prevent competitive devaluation of the currencies as well (avoid countries printing money to cheapen their exports and gain advantage in trading)

• To ensure the US did not abuse it’s privilege as the world’s de-facto currency, the US dollar would be freely convertible into gold (if the US printed an excess quantity of $’s, nations accumulating too many dollars from US trade/budget deficits could convert and retire these dollar’s into gold (gold representing a relatively fixed quantity and storage of value).